Wetting control through topography and surface hydrophilic/hydrophobic property changes by coarse grained simulation

Abstract

The changes of wetting state of water droplet on the solid surface featuring pillared structures are quantitatively studied by Coarse Grained simulation. Our results demonstrate that wetting state changes with the different topography (surface roughness), and it depends on the intrinsic hydrophilic/hydrophobic property of surface as well. Only if the contact angle of water droplet on the smooth surface is larger than 93.13°, the wetting state translates from the Wenzel state to the Cassie state on the rough surface with certain pillar height and width, and the contact angle climb up to the highest point and then remain almost unchanged with the increasing of pillar height and the same pillar distance. However, the wetting state does not change if the contact angle on the smooth surface is 85.1° or less, no matter what pillar structure the surface has. Additionally, the contact angles will remain almost unchanged if the pillar height is higher than a certain value. Our simulation results provide a quantitative understanding about the wetting state of water droplet on solid rough surfaces, and the results show the wetting state can be controlled by combining rough structure design and hydrophilic/hydrophobic property change of surfaces.     

Microbial production of small peptide: pathway engineering and synthetic biology

Small peptides are a group of natural products with low molecular weights and complex structures. The diverse structures of small peptides endow them with broad bioactivities and suggest their potential therapeutic use in the medical field. The remaining challenge is methods to address the main limitations, namely (i) the low amount of available small peptides from natural sources, and (ii) complex processes required for traditional chemical synthesis. Therefore, harnessing microbial cells as workhorse appears to be a promising approach to synthesize these bioactive peptides. As an emerging engineering technology, synthetic biology aims to create standard, well-characterized and controllable synthetic systems for the biosynthesis of natural products. In this review, we describe the recent developments in the microbial production of small peptides. More importantly, synthetic biology approaches are considered for the production of small peptides, with an emphasis on chassis cells, the evolution of biosynthetic pathways, strain improvements and fermentation.     

NOD1 activates autophagy to aggravate hepatic ischemia-reperfusion injury in mice

Hepatic ischemia/reperfusion injury (IRI) is tissue damage resulting from return of the blood supply to the tissue after a period of ischemia or lack of oxygen. Much of the morbidity associated with liver transplantation and major hepatic resections is, in part, due to IRI. Both innate immunity and autophagy play important roles in hepatic IRI. With regard to innate immunity, one factor that plays a key role is NOD1, an intracellular pattern recognition receptor. NOD1 has recently been shown to be associated with autophagy, but the mechanisms involved with this process remain obscure. This relationship between NOD1 and autophagy prompted us to examine the role and potential mechanisms of NOD1 in regulating autophagy as related to hepatic IRI. We found that NOD1 was upregulated during hepatic IRI and was associated with an activation of the autophagic signaling pathway. Moreover, levels of Atg5, a critical protein associated with autophagy, were decreased when NOD1 was inhibited by NOD1 small interfering RNA. We conclude that NOD1 appears to exert a pivotal role in hepatic IRI by activating autophagy to aggravate hepatic IRI, and Atg5 was required for this process. The identification of this novel pathway, that links expression levels of NOD1 with Atg5-mediated autophagy, may provide new insights for the generation of novel protective therapies directed against hepatic IRI.     

免耕套种与秸秆还田对农田生态环境及小麦生长的影响

1　引　　言免耕作为低耗持续农业生产和保护性耕作的一项重要手段,越来越受到国内外学者的重视.在国外,免耕最早是20世纪30年代为防治土壤风蚀而采取的措施,60年代得到迅速发展,且随着研究的不断深入,免耕的作用逐渐扩大[10,18].我国自70年代后期开始免耕的系统研究,在免耕和秸秆覆盖对土壤理化性质、微生物区系及生态环境的影响等方面都有不少报道[2,11,16,17,23].秸秆还田在提高土壤肥力,增加作物产量等方面已被许多研究所证实[3,5～8,12,13,19～21].随着社会和生产的发展,秸秆还田的方式,方法和数量都在不断变化,尤其是部分地区禁烧秸秆…     

基于AD-AS模型的海岸带生态系统综合承载力评估——以舟山海岸带为例

以舟山海岸带为研究区域,结合采样数据和社会经济发展数据,构建以社会因子、经济因子和自然因子为3个维度因子的海岸带生态系统综合承载力评估的指标体系。并参照经济学中的AD-AS模型,改进成综合总供给-综合总需求模型(SAD-SAS模型),根据生态系统中总供给与总需求之间的平衡关系,来计算舟山海岸带综合承载力量值,并尝试将海岸带综合承载力值的分类标准在原来的基础上分为5类,最后评价其所处的承载力水平。研究结果表明:舟山海岸带综合承载力在2005—2008年时处于微幅上升的阶段,年均增速为6.5%,在2008—2009年开始出现稍微的下降,下降幅度为3%;SAD-SAS模型作为生态学与经济学交叉的模型,为海岸带综合承载力评价提供了一种新思路。     

Analysis of Dual-Channel Simultaneous Detection of Photonic Crystal Fiber Sensors

Plasmonics - Photonic crystal fiber (PCF) sensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) has broad application prospects in the detection of biological proteins, DNA/RNA, and toxic chemicals....     

Functional evaluation of genetic and environmental regulators of p450 mRNA levels

Variations in the activities of Cytochrome P450s are one of the major factors responsible for inter-individual differences in drug clearance rates, which may cause serious toxicity or inefficacy of therapeutic drugs. Various mRNA level is one of the key factors for different activity of the major P450 genes. Although both genetic and environmental regulators of P450 gene expression have been widely investigated, few studies have evaluated the functional importance of cis- and trans-regulatory factors and environmental factors in the modulation of inter-individual expression variations of the P450 genes. In this study, we measured the mRNA levels of seven major P450 genes (CYP1A1, CYP1A2, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, CYP2D6, CYP3A4 and CYP3A5) in 96 liver biopsy samples from Chinese population. Both trans-acting (mRNA levels and non-synonymous SNPs of putative regulator genes) and cis-acting (gene copy number and functional SNPs) factors were investigated to identify the determinants of the expression variations of these seven P450 genes. We found that expression variations of most P450 genes, regulator genes and housekeeping genes were positively correlated at the mRNA level. After partial correlation analysis using ACTB and GAPDH expression to eliminate the effect of global regulators, a UPGMA (Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Mean) tree was constructed to reveal the effects of specific regulation networks potentially masked by global regulators. Combined with the functional analysis of regulators, our results suggested that expression variation at the mRNA level was mediated by several factors in a gene-specific manner. Cis-acting genetic variants might play key roles in the expression variation of CYP2D6 and CYP3A5, environmental inducers might play key roles in CYP1A1 and CYP1A2 variation and global regulators might play key roles in CYP2C9 variation. In addition, the functions of regulators that play less important roles in controlling expression variation for each P450 gene were determined.     

High GC content of simple sequence repeats in Herpes simplex virus type 1 genome

The presence, locations and composition of simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) genome were extracted and analyzed by using the software Imperfect Microsatellite Extractor (IMEx). There were 663 mon-, 502 di-, 184 tri-, 20 tetra-, 4 penta- and 4 hexanucleotide SSRs that were observed in different distribution between coding and noncoding regions in the HSV-1 genome. G/C, GC/CG, and (GGC)(n) were predominant in mononucleotide, dinucletide, trinucleotide repeats respectively. Indeed, the results showed that GC content in simple sequence repeats was notably higher than that in entire HSV-1 genome. Our data might be helpful for studying the pathogenesis, genome structure and evolution of HSV-1.